Mike Duggan guaranteed a do over'

Mike Duggan is a very smart man. He is known for being tenacious. His history as a chief lieutenant to former Wayne County Executive Ed McNamara confirms that he is a stickler for getting things done. He is a lawyer, which implies he understands how things can be nuanced, if necessary. All this and more suggests that the events of the last few weeks may be more than meets the eye as Duggan seems to have dealt himself a “Get Out Of Jail” card from what surely must be a dubious deck.

Duggan threw his hat into the ring to become mayor of Detroit well before many others. He put together a group of inside supporters and advisers who were supposed to be nearly as smart as him. Among them was Conrad Mallett Jr., a former Michigan Supreme Court Chief justice, a key Duggan confidant. Melvin (Butch) Hollowell, another lawyer and former co-chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, was also a Duggan sidekick. These two guys are supposed to be at the top of their game; it seems unlikely they would not know how to read a statute, much less a local city charter provision.

Duggan registered to vote in Detroit on April 16, 2012, and, with great fanfare and media hype, filed his petitions to be a candidate for mayor on April 2, 2013. Detroit’s new charter contains a requirement that a person seeking office in Detroit must be a resident for at least one year. Seems like the math is pretty clear on that, right? Not to Duggan’s people, who think it means by the filing deadline of May 14, 2013.

Tom Barrow gets wind of this “discrepancy” and fires off a letter to Secretary of State Ruth Johnson asking her to intervene. She declines. Barrow and Robert Davis then send a letter to Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey alleging that Duggan should be disqualified. This is the same Janice Winfrey that Duggan’s organization checked with before he filed his petitions to make sure everything was on the up and up. Turns out Winfrey saw nothing amiss with his filing early and let his people know so.

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The charter language reads “All candidates for elective office and elected officials shall be bona fide residents of the City of Detroit and must maintain their principal residence in the City of Detroit for one (1) year at the time of filing for office or appointment to office.” Duggan takes that to mean the filing deadline, which is May 14, 2013. How three lawyers read something else is weird, but suspicious.

This is what I think happened: Duggan got a case of political buyer’s remorse. Sometime well before the filing of this petition, Duggan realized an emergency manager would be named, which would render any mayor impotent. Not wanting to be a neutered figurehead like Dave Bing, Duggan realized that his campaign could not get the horse back in the barn. There had to be a way for Duggan to stay in the game but not be revealed as backing away from his “commitment” to Detroit.

Knowing that Barrow is the kind of guy who goes through stuff like this with an accountant’s microscope, Duggan’s team then files early so that it would be someone else pulling the plug and not Duggan. That would allow Duggan to play the victim, especially for suburbanites who feel they have some skin in the game when it comes to Detroit. Duggan gets by the Detroit Elections Commission, of which Winfrey is a member. Detroit’s interim corporation counsel, Edward Keelean, sides with Winfrey, while Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh votes to remove Duggan from the ballot.

Barrow and Davis do what they do best: file a request for an injunction. To a great many persons’ surprise, Wayne County Circuit Judge Lita Popke rules in their favor and orders Duggan’s removal from the ballot. Duggan appeals to the Michigan Court of Appeals, where a majority finds that Judge Popke was on point when she said in her ruling that the charter language was “clear and unambiguous.” Duggan is off the ballot and Barrow and Davis are now more politically leprous than ever before.

The irony of this is Duggan is now free to look across the political landscape for another “opportunity.” Maybe he will go after Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, who cannot catch a break. At the end of the day, Barrow and Davis may have been the best thing to ever happen to Duggan.